As a part of the Build Solid Ground project, supported by the European Union, Habitat for Humanity created a podcast series on housing issues around the world: Home Sapiens.

Episode 1 - the first of five episodes in season one – is an interview with Esben Neander Kristensen, Director at Gehl. He talks to Katerina Bezgachina, who heads communications for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Habitat for Humanity, about housing, home, people and their communities and cities.

The starting point for the interview is the difference between home and housing, a pivotal one according to Esben. While the latter is mostly related to functional needs, the former has a lot more to do with social interactions: with family and neighbours and, more in general, the community and the whole city.

One cannot live properly without the other, at least not in Gehl’s work, which focuses on a holistic perspective to make sure that the individual not only has basic needs met but can also connect with the rest of the community.

We could say that civilization started when people started created buildings and shelters, and they change as our communities and society do so. The challenges are the same all around the world: in many cases, all architects recognize the same issues and, sometimes, also the solutions to those issues.

Why is it key to address affordable housing?

When it comes to housing, according to Esben, ensuring that authorities build an adequate home for their population is actually a lot cheaper in the long run than not providing any.

It is an important goal, as is the need to provide true homes – not houses disconnected from their communities – for everyone, which often is more complicated than many expect. As a matter of fact, in many countries, despite the success in delivering housing, it has been much harder to create real homes for families and communities.

If you build affordable housing in locations that lack the most basic services and infrastructure, you are creating a situation in which they will never turn into a home. Urbanizing areas that have no jobs, transportation, schools and utilities nearby means turning them almost surely into abandoned territories: in some Latin American countries, up to 70% of new buildings destined for social housing become abandoned.

But then, how do you build useful affordable housing? What are the key components that make it successful?

Apart from making sure that basic needs are met – which sits at the core – additional layers must be added, with the idea of creating a place that can be both:

• A place of retracting, if you need to
• And of interacting with the world around you.

If we think about the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, balconies where a pivotal element to guarantee communication and interaction between people, despite many limitations. Social interactions are crucial for humans, and that must be taken into account when building a house.

What is exactly this “sustainability” everybody talks about?

Regarding the urbanization of developing countries, a lot has to do with economics and politics. However, there is an important role for the architect when it comes to sustainability, especially the local aspect. Basic services are of course central to communities, but they can also be found in places that could be counterproductive; so, the architect has the responsibility to be smart about the location, especially when dealing with larger cities.

When talking about housing, sustainability has many different levels:

1. Technical sustainability, connected to the performance of all the buildings components, especially in terms of energy.
2. Local adaptation or fitness, understanding where you can make the most impact, which is not the same everywhere.

If, for example, wasting less energy can be crucial in Northern Europe, in warmer climates such as Latin America, Africa or South East Asia there might be other levels of sustainability where you can make a bigger impact, for example, keeping rooms cool to enhance productivity and comfort. This could save a lot of money and greenhouse gases from air conditioning costs too.

That’s why location and land use are so important. This is something that everybody keeps forgetting: in many cases, there are already buildings located in an ideal place in terms of connections, so it would be a great to reuse them. As Esben puts it, to be “smarter about the square meters that we have already built”.

What should be kept in mind is that home is a place where you get the chance to disconnect from the world and at the same time connect to other things around you.

Now, after a pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, we understood a lot more about the link between us and our homes and from that we should start to improve the quality of living for all humans across the globe.

Listen to Home Sapiens podcast on:

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Even as COVID-19 significantly impacted Habitat’s ability to build at full capacity — and likely will continue to do so in many locations well into 2021 — we still have seen great progress and positive results. In fiscal year 2020, we helped more than 5.9 million people build or improve a place to call home, and through training and advocacy, an additional 9.9 million gained the potential to improve their housing conditions.

Annual Report 2020 online

BRATISLAVA (Oct. 5, 2020) – Emerging economies struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic may be significantly underestimating how much their housing sectors contribute to gross domestic product (GDP) and, as a result, missing opportunities for economic and social revival, according to a report released by Habitat for Humanity to mark World Habitat Day.

Existing datasets in low- to middle-income countries are often incomplete or inaccurate, and efforts to measure housing’s contribution to the economy have largely focused on developed countries, according to the report commissioned by Habitat’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter and co-authored by Arthur Acolin, assistant professor of real estate at the University of Washington, and Marja Hoek-Smit, director of the International Housing Finance Program of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center.

But including the often-overlooked housing services and informal housing components reveals housing to account for up to 16.1 percent of GDP on average across 11 emerging economy countries analyzed in the report. That places housing on par with sectors such as manufacturing that often draw far more attention in economic recovery plans. In the Philippines, assuming official statistics count half the informal housing market — whereby families improve homes via an incremental process — housing’s actual share of GDP is 17.3 percent, the report found.

Inclusive financial interventions in the housing sector, particularly through construction or rental assistance, can stimulate economies in these countries while also improving the wellbeing of families through healthier housing conditions, according to the report, titled Cornerstone of Recovery: How Housing Can Help Emerging Market Economies Rebound from COVID-19.

“Look beyond the blind spots in the data and you see that housing can make or break a recovery,” said Patrick Kelley, vice president of the Terwilliger Center. “Investments in healthy, secure housing have greater-than-expected benefits, creating jobs, generating incomes and, critically, helping alleviate the overcrowding that makes communities more vulnerable to threats such as COVID-19.”  

The authors recommend stimulus policies that, in cooperation with the international and private sectors, focus on middle- and lower- income families while also including formal and informal markets, rental housing, and community organizations. They emphasize short-term actions to: make good land available for housing; open access to finance for developers, households and landlords; provide equitable subsidies to households; and offer incentives to lenders and builders. 

The report is the subject of a live panel discussion titled “+You: Is housing the secret to economic recovery from COVID-19?” The World Habitat Day panel includes Kelley and Hoek-Smit and can be viewed at www.habitat.ngo/economicrecovery.  

Bratislava, (May 21, 2020) - A new housing project of Habitat for Humanity and Somfy Foundation aims to help 30 vulnerable households in Egypt in need of housing.

In 2014, Somfy and Habitat for Humanity started a pilot project in Brazil with the objective to improve the living conditions and quality of life of single mothers. Following the successful pilot and vision of a decent place to live, this partnership has gradually expanded to seven countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Lebanon, Poland, USA, and now Egypt.

• Somfy Foundation and its local subsidiaries supported more than 250 people with better homes.
• 750 people assisted with community projects.
• Housing renovation projects help beneficiaries live in decent conditions and healthy space.

In times when home has become a front-line defence against the coronavirus, Habitat’s mission of providing access to safe, decent and affordable shelter has become more important than ever. In Egypt, nearly 20 million people live in substandard housing, which endangers safety of families and causes severe health problems.  

Renovation and housing projects with partners like Somfy Foundation allow Habitat for Humanity to help the most vulnerable to have healthier living conditions, provide access to clean water and keep them safe.

Habitat for Humanity International
Driven by the vision that everyone deserves a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity began in 1976 as a grassroots effort. The housing organization has since grown to become a leading global charity working in more than 70 countries. Habitat for Humanity works in partnership with families and individuals in need of a hand-up to build or improve a place they can call home. Learn more at habitat.org/emea or follow @HabitatEMEA. 

About Somfy

Founded in 1969 in the Arve Valley, in the Haute-Savoie region of France, and now operating in 58 countries, Somfy is the preferred partner for window and door automation and a pioneer in the connected home. The Group is constantly innovating to guarantee comfort, wellbeing and security in the home and is committed to promoting sustainable development. Somfy Foundation aims to give everyone the dignity they deserve.